


get on like a house on fire

by Laylah



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Branding, Canon-Typical Harm, F/F, Masochism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-25 00:57:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20368006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: 1991: Agnes wants to see the extent of Jude's devotion to the Lightless Flame. Jude would do anything for her.





	get on like a house on fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starforged](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starforged/gifts).

There's a scent of smoke on the air when Jude leaves the office, just enough to reach her senses and make the hair stand up on her nape. The weather's turned chill these last few nights, but it isn't the wholesome scent of somebody's fireplace or even the life-sustaining desperation of trash being burned in an alley. It's a house burning to the ground. Jude can tell the difference by now.

She turns toward the scent, drawn toward it like—hah—a moth to a flame. She's due home for supper and Gretchen will be angry, but that's nothing new. There's been trouble smouldering between them for quite some time now. One of these days it'll kindle for real.

Jude follows the scent, pacing through the streets as twilight turns to night proper. After twenty minutes it's strong enough to tell her there were casualties, the mouthwatering smell of crisped fat and skin mixing with the burnt wood and molten plastic of the building's guts. She quickens her pace.

She's still too late to watch the destruction take place. By the time she finds the right street, the fire department have barricaded the house—what's left of it—and the crowd watching have the quiet, disappointed air of people who've just come from watching their team lose a match in a predictable way. Some of them are talking to one another about how lucky it was that the fire didn't jump to the rest of the street; others are watching the coals and marveling at how fast the house was devoured.

But then Jude's disappointment evaporates, instantly dispelled by the one watcher standing apart from the crowd: Agnes. She looks serene as Renaissance portrait, watching the remains of the house smoulder. Even when a beam loses the last of its integrity and crashes to the ground, she doesn't flinch. But she's not a pillar of stability in the face of chaos; rather, she's the pure destructive force in the face of which no lesser manifestation measures up. Jude could no more turn away from her than she could give little Desmond Trikenzo his parents back. But why would she want to?

She drifts closer until she imagines she can feel the heat radiating off Agnes' body, though she knows full well that Agnes can control it when she chooses. Agnes watches her, dark eyes reflecting the glow of the coals, lips barely curved in the suggestion of a smile. A stray lock of hair hangs in her face and Jude can't resist the temptation to reach out and tuck it behind her ear.

It _hurts_, Agnes' skin so brilliantly, unrelentingly hot that touching her feels like it must be leaving blisters. Jude doesn't hurry. The agony makes her feel alive, though her fingers are pink and swollen when she pulls back.

"Come to admire the view, or are you here for business?"

"Six of one, half dozen of the other," Agnes murmurs. "The Desolation is always hungry." She looks Jude up and down, taking in the smart black suit and the subdued, 'respectable' makeup, and says, "Did we call you away from work?"

"I couldn't have stayed away once I caught this on the wind," Jude says. "Even before I knew it'd be a chance to see you again." Is that too forward? She's never been sure whether Agnes likes women—whether Agnes likes _anyone_—or if she just allows mere mortals to flirt with her so it'll be sweeter when they fail. She doesn't mind either way. Anyone who didn't have a self-destructive streak wouldn't fall for her in the first place.

After a moment of quiet, Agnes says, "You're so close." The hungry whisper of her voice is like a wildfire moving through dry grass, building intensity before it reaches human habitation. "You'll be ready to take the last step so soon."

"I'm ready now," Jude says. It's reckless. She's reckless. But who could help it? "Test me, if you want."

She can see Agnes considering it, weighing her, and then at last nodding. "Follow me."

Jude does. Agnes leads the way as though she knows the neighborhood well, taking turns with no hesitation. She finds a shuttered corner shop with a cellar door opening on an alley, and Jude almost asks what they're doing here; the shop looks like it's been out of business for months, from the graffiti, and that doesn't seem like the sort of place where there's much left to destroy.

Then Agnes melts the padlock on the cellar door, and Jude forgets that she might have had an objection. Her heart pounds as she follows Agnes inside.

The electricity's still on, so maybe the place has been closed for less time than it appears. Agnes flips on a light, a bare bulb that illuminates a cramped, unglamorous little storage space with such a low ceiling that the various exposed pipes overhead are within arm's reach even for Jude. Nothing about the room seems exceptional. Why _here_?

"If you want to keep any of the clothes you're wearing, you should take them off," Agnes says—casually, as though it's nothing important. Jude's heart speeds up all the same.

As much as she likes the idea of her clothes, and the life they represent, being burned away by whatever Agnes has planned, she'll probably have to leave this room at some point, and she'll want the option of being dressed. And stripping for Agnes has its own appeal, doesn't it?

So she does. She tosses her blazer and shirt and slacks on top of a dusty stack of boxes, leaves her underthings in a pile on the floor, and bites her lip the whole time to keep from asking Agnes what they're doing here. If this is already a test, she doesn't want to ruin her chances with stupid questions.

Agnes smiles at her. It makes her feel warm all over despite the chill of the evening. "Stand here," Agnes says, pointing to a spot in the middle of the floor. "And..." She looks up at the plumbing running overhead, the silent copper circulatory system of a building that is, if not dead, at least in need of resuscitation. "Can you take a grip on those?"

"Of course." She takes her position and wraps her hands around the cool metal, watching Agnes study her. It would feel like the setup for some kind of tawdry whips-and-chains exchange if it weren't for the look on Agnes' face. Jude hasn't been self-conscious about her body in years; she's shorter and stockier than any of the women in fashion adverts and anyone who minds that isn't worth her time. But the way Agnes looks at her is something other than ordinary lust—it's weightier and more dangerous, the regard of a woman through whom a god moves. It makes Jude's palms damp and her throat dry.

"Good," Agnes says. "Now don't let go. This is definitely going to hurt."

It is, even apart from the pun, one of the hottest things anyone has ever said to Jude. She nods, and Agnes steps forward, reaching out to her.

The first place Agnes touches is her collarbone, a gentle stroke of her fingertip that would be a sweet caress from an ordinary human. It burns so hot and fierce Jude can feel it all through her body, distant nerves firing in sympathy as the ones at the site get overwhelmed. She looks down when Agnes lifts up her hand, and can just see one end of the burn, bright angry red with a faint outline of black char where the skin itself is giving up on resisting. She's holding tight enough to the pipes that her knuckles ache. She makes herself loosen her grip.

"More," she breathes.

Agnes hums contentedly. She explores Jude's body with those delicate, agonizing touches: belly, thighs, underarms, leaving feverish welts in her wake. Jude pants for breath, sweating, blistering pain arcing through her body in unpredictable patterns. A touch to her hip makes her nipples harden. A curling burn across her upper back makes her clit throb and swell so abruptly _that's_ pain, too. The smell of scorched flesh is her own, this time. She makes herself push toward Agnes' hands when her voice sticks in her dry throat, when she can't give voice to her pleas. It feels like the heat is building under her skin, like her body is struggling to contain it all, and the sensation is a bit like the climb toward orgasm but it's so much _more_, a climb toward metamorphosis. The Lightless Flame scouring her out to make her a vessel for power.

"So close," Agnes murmurs against her ear, hot breath and the scent of incense and ash. "You can take just a little more, can't you?" Her hand hovers right at Jude's groin, close enough to make the hair scorch and shrivel.

Jude takes a deep breath. "Always," she says. She widens her stance.

Agnes' hand slips between her legs, fingers pressing against her clit, and—there's a moment that Jude can't even process, that her brain refuses to hold onto. Then she's aware of screaming, and of coming, and of ravenous heat rising up through her body in search of an escape. The pipe she's holding onto abruptly cracks further down its length and steam hisses furiously out of it. Jude sags, spent and ecstatic.

Agnes holds out her hands, palms up. Jude puts her own hands in them and as Agnes holds her like that it doesn't burn at all.

They spend a few minutes there, quiet, enjoying the sacredness of the moment. Jude can feel her heartbeat in all of her burns. It's beautiful. 

Eventually Agnes says, "You know what the last step is, don't you?"

Nobody has told her, but Jude thinks about it and realizes she does. She nods.

"You're ready," Agnes says. "You could do it tonight if you want to."

"I do," Jude says. "I will. When I get home." That's the only place for it, really. The site of her mortal life is the only place to truly shed it.

She'll just need to pick up some kerosene.


End file.
